My goodness it is dusty around here. Sadly life has been far too crazy to post any updates for… two and a half years? Ouch. I think I had better change that and provide some content once again. It is hard to decide where to start so I guess chronologically would be the best option.
Two an a half years ago we were a family of three and were preparing for an addition to the clan. LaRay was attending school to finish up her degree in computer science and I was attempting (read:failing) to start a software company. Sammy was teaching us how to be parents and we were locating a suitable home for our aging cat named Kat.
Fast forward a few months and we have a 3 year old girl amazing us every day and I am quickly draining my 401k and savings while vainly moving forward with the software project that was going nowhere. LaRay finished her degree at Colorado Tech and decided to take some time off as she had become pregnant with our second child.
A few more months and I chose to surrender in my quest for world domination and obtained gainful employment in a credit card retention department at a major bank. Sammy learned how to ride a bike with training wheels and LaRay was promoted to a programming position at the same bank(she had been working there for 6 years at the time).
The following winter I decided that I would try out depression and after careful study I recommend that it be avoided at all costs. It was a rough time for all of us as I was working out what went wrong in my head. Luckily it only took 2 or 3 months before I felt normal again. After handling that issue I started a reduced calorie diet of salad for lunch and soup with a roll for dinner which netted me a 35 pound weight loss.
Rolling into the summer of 2007 we were very near our due date for Alexander Eugene and started eyeing property that would give us some elbow room for our larger family than our current 1 bedroom townhouse would allow. We found a piece of land a few miles outside of the city with beautiful countryside surrounding it and a small town close by. Shortly after that I started to tear apart our townhouse to replace the 20 year old carpet with some laminate wood and updated carpeting. Luckily we were able to complete all the needed updates before Xander was born and put our home on the market.
Luck had obviously placed a rather large bet on me as everything went very well. The house sold after being on the market only 3 days and we got our asking price right as the market just kinda stopped working. We contacted our bank and secured a loan just before the mortgage market had a near fatal heart attack, and we contacted our builder who was able to get our home built before the end of winter. Then luck decided it had better things to do and everything started to become very problematic…
I decided to save some money and build my own garage, twice. My brother in law is a contractor and helped me build it but I failed to listen to some of his wisdom and a very strong wind pushed my framed garage into a pile of sticks. I did still have some luck and it worked out that there was almost no actual damage to the wood so we just had to set it up a second time, and this time add some bigger braces. Then we had problems closing on the mortgage since the rules kept changing due to all the turmoil in the mortgage market this spring.
It did all finally work out though, we moved in and are quite comfortable dealing with little day to day problems of home ownership and budgets being extremely tight for the time being due to some unforeseen expenses while building the house. I got a Magnum with a Hemi and Sammy and Xander put their piggies together and bought a pint sized F-150 to cruise the countyside. LaRay has gone back to school again to get her Masters degree and I decided to start up school again so I can stop being such a dumbass but there is little hope for me. So thanks for reading my ramblings and I do promise to start posting more regular updates here now that things are as normal as I assume they will ever get.